Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Another Day, Another Gatecrash Phantom Sealed

And another 2-1, which is fine.

I went RUG. Had lots of fixing for those colors, including a Prophetic Prism, a Breeding Pool, and 3 Gruul Guildgates. I had a good curve and a couple of bombs in Rubblebelt Raiders and Clan Defiance (which I was extremely careful when casting).

I had the good fortune of facing basically the nut Orzhov sealed pool. Game 1 I saw Alms Beast, One Thousand Lashes, 2 Devour Flesh, and multiple extort creatures. It was a close game, but I lost that one. I thought, "He's got a strong deck, but I can beat it." Game 2 I was ahead on the race and turn 5 he drops Obzedat, Ghost Council.

The instinct at that point is to just give up, but I fought through and actually won that game on the back of an Adaptive Snapjaw and Drakewing Krasis suited up with Hands of Binding. Game 3 I kept a hand with 2 Islands, a Forest, and 3 castable spells, including 2 creatures. I proceeded to draw 3 red creatures and no mountains. And Obzedat resolved again on turn 5, so that was pretty much game.

Match 2 I faced another, weaker Orzhov deck (couldn't really be any stronger than the first round one). I won 2-1, dropping the second game due to not having green mana the whole game.

Match 3 was against a pretty mediocre Boros deck. Clan Defiance is especially brutal against Boros if they go 2-drop into Skyknight Legionnaire, which my opponent did. I won the match 2-0 pretty handily.

In Sealed I'm finding it most useful to sort by creatures of each color first. Often that dictates the deck. I'm also finding it extremely difficult lately to get 14+ creatures in two colors, forcing me into three. At that point, fixing becomes a bigger issue. And even though I had 4 dual lands in my colors and a Prism, I still lost 2 games due to color issues. I'm just hoping that the Sunday Sealed tournament gives me enough strong playables in 2 colors...I wouldn't mind having my Round 1 opponent's pool from this event on Sunday. We'll see.